 February 5, 2010 - 10:22pm | Been some discussion in the WTOC bail on star wars thread and I wanted to get some discussion just focused on this issue. 1. Do we need an analogue to Dungeon Magazine? something to stand side by with SFman but just focused on adventures & mini modules or a full fledged module each issue. 2 if we need or want an Adventure magazine then what should we call it? Terl Obar has suggested Frontier Adventures which is also the name of an Alaskan travel agency but probably not a problem. Any other good names? 3. what would we want to see in the magazine? 4. In a perfect universe how often would you want to see it come out? 5. Any other thoughts on something I missed. If I didn't have all of you who do contribute, to steal ideas off of my ideas would start to suck vacuum. |
 February 5, 2010 - 10:47pm | I like the idea. Start out small, do it as an addendum to the SFman for several issues, then if there is more interest and submissions expand from there. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 February 5, 2010 - 10:53pm | Some comments: 1) It has defininte posibilities. While it might pull a little content from the SFman magazine, it doesn't carry a lot of adventure content right now. Plus it allows them to run on different time scales if needed which it probably does as there will probably be more effort needed to get the adventures ready. 2) I like Frontier Adventures but that is just the first thing that came to mind. I'm sure I'll think of something else as well. 3) There is a couple of possibilites here. You could do a full up module in a single issue. Or you could have an issue contain a bunch of little encounter scenarios. Or you could serialize several adventures and have one section from each one in an adventure. Or some combination of the above, plus other game aids specificly aimed at the adventures although some of that should probably go in SFman. 4) Depending on the format, I'd vote for every 3, 4 or 6 months. The bigger the module included, the more time will be needed for development so you'll need less frequent issues. I'd probably shoot for the 6 month rate and then increase it as more content starts coming in. 5) Nothing else comes to mind at the moment. Ad Astra Per Ardua! Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network |
 February 8, 2010 - 12:22am | Adventures! should continue in the Star Frontiersman. We have another heading called Scenarios that has more information than the Adventures! section. (I'm not sure if they need to be split out)  However, a fully fledged module/adventure/campaign deserves it's own publication. In my opinion Basically Speaking would be a perfect start. Shadow is the Creator, if he gives his blessing someone should take the lead to coordinate the project and get it completed. I've been updating this beast as we publish each issue. (It's a download on sfman.com website)  |
 February 8, 2010 - 10:20pm | I'm very interested in writing up some adventures. A lot of ideas I'd like to use that I don't have the opportunity to play - not in a household that has a lot of gamers. |
 February 11, 2010 - 10:31pm | Why not have adventures in the Star Frontiersman? I think that doing a completely different mag just for adventures just splits resources. Do you have a surplus of articles and adventures? I guess I don't understand the need for a whole new magazine.. At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
February 12, 2010 - 10:36am | While it might pull a little content from the SFman magazine, it doesn't carry a lot of adventure content right now. The webzine doesn't carry a lot of adventure content because nobody submits adventure content.  |
 February 16, 2010 - 6:59pm | That will change. The Article Index page is empty. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "Eat yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 February 17, 2010 - 12:37am | I'm a huge fan of Dungeon Magazine. I used to subscribe. I never ran a single adventure from its pages directly, but I did use the maps, the storylines, the creatures, and so many ideas. If someone did this for sci fi gaming (and for Star frontiers specifically) I'd be in heaven. If we could get even ONE adventure submission per issue of the starfrontiersman I'd be happy as heck. But if we could get 4-8 per issue, it would warrant its own 'zine. Do you guys think it's even possible to get that kind of submission content? If one of you wanted to tackle it, I know I'd download it. But to be honest, I doubt we could get that kind of submission rate. It's hard enough to put the webzine together with the small size of our submitting community. ya know? It's not about control. Heck - this site was made to be a sandbox for collaborative development of any sort and this idea is a great example of just that kind of thing I hoped to see from here. But I do wonder if we'd ever see sufficient quantity of quality adventures submitted. How the heck did Dungeon get all that? lol 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
February 17, 2010 - 1:03am | I'm definitely willing to tackle it if people think it would be worth it. I agree that we would need a decent submission rate but that rate would depend on the publication rate as well. If it started out as a semi yearly publication (or maybe even 3 times a year), I think there are enough ideas floating around in just the minds of those here that we could put out a decent set of adventures. It doesn't have to be large to start, even 15 pages of material an issue would be great. I could imagine two types of submissions off the top of my head. The first being small one-off encounter scenarios similar to the ones in the early editions of the Star Frontiersman. They would be self contained and could be modified and dropped into any running campaign as part of the plot or a side adventure. The other would be larger pieces, similar to the published modules but published serially over several issues of the magazine. This would have a couple of effects. One, it allows the authors to spread the writing burden out. There isn't a mad rush to get everything done for a specific issue.but rather more time is available to work on it. I think that would help encourage submissions (but maybe not). Second, it provides a hook for readers to keep coming back (that probably isn't necessary but hey!) and the writers/publishers to keep publishing. Also, if the writer did get it done all at once, it provides a submission backlog to fill future issues. I imagine that once the series is done for a given "module" we could then publish it as a complete module as well in a stand-alone form. Since it is starting here, it will definitely have a Star Frontiers flavor to it, but I'm sure we'd quickly pick up FrontierSpace material. And I think we'd definitely keep the format open to other game systems as well. As Bill said, you can always adapt things to your campaign. If it keeps going, I expect we might grow our submitter pool as well as people realize it is a source for publishing their material. Ad Astra Per Ardua! Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network |
February 17, 2010 - 9:24am | Lets say that submission rate stay low, put one per SFMan, then later in the year complie all of those into one. Or even every 3-4 SFM issues put out one adventure mag with the previous adventures and maybe a couple more. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
February 17, 2010 - 3:13pm | I have modul-ish sized submission on woots desk- a series of encounters but with extra details for a GM to let the players depart a little for the "outline" plus gridded maps for counter or mini use, I've always thought that it was a little rough or slightly unfinished (not sure if woot was expecting more work on it or not) so there is at least one adventure ready though I'm thinking to have another go at touching it up unless its already in issue 14 as we speak. That said maybe a colaborative project for working on adventures is the ticket- use the forums to hash and bash ideas till we have a decent outline of encounters- as much as I come up with ideas i equally feed off the work of others and especially appreciate the imput of more than a few of you. Once rough outline is ironed out (plus at the very least some rough maps) a volunteer (only if you can commit the time) can step in start a first draft write up. it gets compiled to a doc to circulate for feed back in the group then 2nd round of editing goes in. and play testing. after feed back from play testing- 3rd round of editing and packaging for submission. Plenty of room for multiple contributers- artist - sketch and or computer rendered, mapping, writing editing. Big question is should this group be open for all including lurkers to view or should it be slightly exclusive in membership to keep the final submission somewhat fresh for when it hits the zine or even an Adventure Annual? I can play project editor and be responsible for working up a "ladder" and do a lot of the writing. I'm a better editor of other peoples work than my own as the brain will work faster than the fingers and when I re read my stuff the brian "knows" what should be there and I can miss things. If the community thinks this is a good way to proceed and I'll volunteer to start a project and push it along- though I do think we should answer the question above and this in no way will prevent a solo submission by one person who simply wants to write their own. PS the Forbidden Moon adventure could get rolled into this as it started as a community adventure thread. (I've been working on it but it would be a good one to go with this) If I didn't have all of you who do contribute, to steal ideas off of my ideas would start to suck vacuum. |
 February 17, 2010 - 4:29pm | Big question is should this group be open for all including lurkers to view or should it be slightly exclusive in membership to keep the final submission somewhat fresh for when it hits the zine or even an Adventure Annual? I like this idea as it seems the most logical to produce larger modules. I would think that it could remain open membership in a project. My guess is that many of the lurkers stay in the open forums and wouldn't have the treat spoiled by reading it in threads before it hits SFman. Note: I lurked only in the open forums before I even touched projects. I lurked without an account here for quite a while. I also wonder what the percentage of SFman readers that read the forums here is. Are there more SFman readers outside this site than in? If so, anything in the open here would not spoil the freshness of the published product. I'm also more likely to be able to help a group module project along than create a full module myself. -iggy -iggy |
February 17, 2010 - 5:23pm | Closed memberships in the Star Frontiers community have failed repeatedly, and don't typically work too hot in other communities either. Projects on this site fail utterly simply because they're not visible enough or maintain interest enough. Letting someone submit a little here and a little there until they've completed the adventure also isn't a good idea, unless they are an established article writter who shows up for every issue. Otherwise, you will end up with a bunch of unfinished modules. A person who doesn't write frequently should turn in a full manuscript and let the editor decide if it needs to be split up. Even with those who show up regularly, I still recommend completing the module before submitting it. You never know what you will need to change in stuff you have already submitted, and you don't know what's going to happen to you tomorrow. That said, I don't think there will ever be enough module, location, and encounter submissions to warrent a Dungeon-like magazine for Star Frontiers. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "Eat yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
February 18, 2010 - 10:51am | I suppose a project like that should have an ideas thread that its explicitly stated on the front page of the project is for ideas or partial ideas. if the thread becomes too long we lock it and start another maybe make it sticky so it stays at the top. other threads would be for the current project. but then someone would have to wield the big keyboard and say this it what we're working on. if there was enough activity I dont see a problem with 2 threads going with work on two different projects though I'd expect one would progress faster and then the other would slow way down. what it wouldn't or shouldn't do is stop people form doing their own thing. - shadow's adventures in history aught to be getting to the place that he could pound out a module. or discuss in the game talk thread an idea to get feed back on it. which then begs the question why not take well discussed threads from the main forum and say ok here's the summary of that thread's ideas lets see what we can do with this for a full up module or maybe this material would just support an encounter but now we're working on it the project forums. Good points Iggy & Ascent lurkers dont do projects (though I did) and open membership promotes activity. If I didn't have all of you who do contribute, to steal ideas off of my ideas would start to suck vacuum. |
February 27, 2010 - 1:52pm | How many have played out the adventures found in the webzine? I flipped through my hardcopy of 1-6 and noticed a lot of seed adventures, a Raith Lair. In addition Bill Logan submitted an entire campaign. Maybe Referee's are looking for more module-type articles (filled with npc stat block, read-aloud text, etc). A good start might to be convert those articles into module format. |
